Louis Michael: Bus stops… and starts
When your public transport turns up on time and gets you to your destination right on schedule you feel like a blessed 21st century cosmopolitan person productively going about their day. When it’s delayed, packed with people, and you realise too late that you could have made better time if you’d just walked you feel like a total sucker taken in by the illusion of efficiency. Public transport is often a gambling game.
Long before ‘I spy…’ became ‘I spy my bus finally coming round the corner’ one of my earliest memories is sitting on the bus with my mum, on the top deck at the very front. (Truth be told the reason the memory is so vivid is because I distinctly remember asking my mum what this four letter word carved into the seat was. I thought I was being studious.) There was nothing quite as breathtaking as the view from the top of the bus. Fast forward to the present day and public transport no longer inspires that awe. Eight years of regularly getting buses and two years deep into a regular train commute have long since put to rest any wonder my child-self might have seen in these systems of transportation. As an adult they’re a place for you to zone out and switch off while you’re ferried from A to B. So imagine my surprise when, out of the blue, magic found a way to sneak back into the world of buses and trains.
Last week I was sat on the train and, no different from any usual journey, my head was buried in a book. On a basic level it’s an unconscious means of detaching ourselves from the moving room full of strangers around us, whether it’s our phones or music or any other means of distracting ourselves. It was only when I got speaking to two people sat opposite me that all that magic I’d felt as a child flooded back into my head. The longer we talked, the more I began to realise how obscene it is that we all stay silent in what could be equally called a room full of potential friends! Getting off that train I felt something reignited within me, a revival of the child-wonder to be found in all things, if you just keep yourself open.
